Introduction
The account of the wedding at Cana (Jn 2:1–11), in which Jesus turns water into wine, is not merely the record of Christ’s first miracle, but the inauguration of a new stage in the history of salvation. John calls it a “sign”, for it is not a social prodigy meant to rescue a wedding in peril, but a theological revelation that condenses, in a single gesture, the passage from the Old to the New Covenant.
At first glance, the narrative is simple: stone jars filled with water, destined for ritual purification, become vessels of excellent wine. Yet beneath this concrete event lies a hermeneutical key to the whole economy of salvation: water, symbol of the Torah and the Mosaic Law—necessary but insufficient—is transfigured into wine, the symbol of the joy of love and the definitive pact. This article proposes to explore that symbolism, showing how the biblical tradition, the Talmud, the Midrash and patristic reflection converge in reading Cana as a sign of the fullness in Christ, who does not abolish the Law but fulfils it and elevates it in love.
1. Water as a Symbol of the Torah
From the beginnings narrated in Genesis, water is one of the chief and most powerful symbols of the relationship between God and his people. It was over the waters that the Spirit of God hovered, inaugurating the order of creation; and it was also through them that the Creator decided to correct the course of the world, consuming humanity in the flood, when water became an instrument of judgement and of renewal.
By turning the waters into blood God brought the first sign of scourge upon Egypt, and it was under the Red Sea that the Creator separated his people. In the desert, it was from the water that gushed from the rock that life sprang at the heart of Hebrew spirituality when, in the wilderness, the thirsty people cried out—engraving forever in Israel’s memory the conviction that without water there is no life.
Just as without the Torah there is no spiritual subsistence, it became necessary to make a dialectical effort to understand that, without a Law capable of distinguishing the customs of that people—still marked by the vices of slavery in Egypt—from the habits of the other peoples of the desert, Israel would have been culturally diluted and disappeared as a nation. It is no accident that the masters of Judaism chose water as the privileged metaphor of the Mosaic Law.
The biblical and rabbinic tradition continually reinforces this association, establishing an essential parallel: just as water satisfies, purifies and makes fruitful, so too the Torah irrigates, renews and vivifies the soul of Israel. Water, therefore, is not seen merely as a natural resource, but as an image of divine revelation itself in its sustaining function.
The Old Testament is the first witness to this recurring image. The song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 presents the divine teaching as rain and dew that descend gently upon the earth. The metaphor is rich: rain, essential to agriculture, is unpredictable and gratuitous, like revelation.
Isaiah takes up the theme in the famous invitation: “All you who are thirsty, come to the waters” (Is 55:1). This is not merely a material invitation but a spiritual one: the thirst for justice and meaning can only be quenched in the Word of God. The prophet speaks of abundant waters, available to all, without price—a sign that the Torah is a divine gift, not human possession. The parallel between water and Word thus becomes the starting-point for the whole Jewish exegetical tradition.
The testimony of the rabbis further reinforces the ethical dimension of the metaphor. Just as water is distributed without favouritism, so the Torah must be offered to all. Rabbis of the second century already said that “just as one cannot live without water, one cannot live without the Torah”. This universality will be taken up in the New Testament when Jesus proclaims: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (Jn 7:37). The spiritual thirst once quenched by the Torah now finds its fulfilment in the person of Christ. Gamaliel, as a representative of the Pharisaic tradition, would be a witness that the water of the Law is not opposed to the living water promised by Christ, but leads to it.
2. Wine as a Symbol of Love and Covenant
If water, in the biblical and rabbinic imagination, is linked to sustenance and purification, wine, for its part, assumes the role of symbol of joy, love and covenant. Scripture presents it not merely as a drink, but as a reality charged with religious and spiritual meaning. The psalmist praises the gift of wine that “gladdens the heart of man” (Ps 104:15), showing that creation was given not only for subsistence but also for rejoicing. The Song of Songs heightens the symbolism further, comparing love to the intensity and delight of wine: “Better than wine is your love” (Sg 1:2). The metaphor does not diminish love; it magnifies it, showing that even wine, considered the height of human pleasure, is insufficient before the greatness of true love. Already in Exodus, during the confirmation of the covenant at Sinai, we find a detail that should not be overlooked: the elders of Israel “saw God, and they ate and drank” (Ex 24:11). This is a sacred banquet that seals the pact between God and the people, where food and, especially, wine become a concrete sign of communion and irrevocable bond.
The Jewish tradition received and deepened this symbolism. The Talmud, in the tractate Pesachim 109a, states in lapidary fashion: “There is no joy without wine.” The phrase appears in the context of the four cups of the Passover Seder, each laden with theological and historical meaning. There, wine is not a mere festive accessory, but a constitutive element of the celebration: each cup recalls a promise of liberation, and to drink is to take part in the living memory of the exodus. The joy, in this case, is not ephemeral; it is the joy of freedom, of the covenant renewed in every generation. In Berachot35a, the Talmud explains that wine requires a special blessing, distinct from other foods. The reason is clear: wine elevates the everyday to the level of the sacred, transforming the common act of drinking into an act of acknowledging divine goodness. In blessing wine, a person recognises that life is not merely survival, but a vocation to joy and communion.
The Midrash reinforces the same reading. In Genesis Rabbah 36:1 the teaching is echoed: “There is no joy without wine, as it is written: ‘And wine gladdens the heart of man.’” The repetition of the formula shows that, in Jewish hermeneutics, wine transcends the material plane and becomes a symbol of spiritual joy—the joy that manifests itself in feasts, weddings, family gatherings and, above all, in covenants. Wine seals pacts because it carries a dimension of permanence: just as the vine needs time, care and fidelity to bear fruit, so too the covenant demands perseverance and constancy.
Against this horizon, it becomes clear why the rabbis associated wine with love and fidelity. True love, like good wine, matures with time, preserves the memory of care and patience, and finally overflows in shared rejoicing. Wine is not drunk alone: it is always a sign of a table laid, of communion established, of covenant sealed. It is no accident that Jewish rites, from the Sabbath to the great solemnities, open with the blessing of the cup, the Kiddush, in which the sanctification of time is proclaimed. Wine thus becomes the visible mediator of divine love inscribed in the history of the people.
The New Testament will inherit this legacy and bring it to its fullness. At the wedding of Cana, Jesus turns water into wine (Jn 2:1–11), a gesture that is not merely a miracle of abundance, but a sign of the new covenant. The first wine, limited, runs out; the wine of Christ is new, abundant and superior. With this gesture he shows that the joy of divine love surpasses that of the old covenant and inaugurates an eternal nuptial banquet. Later, at the Last Supper, Jesus will take the cup and say: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Lk 22:20). Wine comes to signify, supremely, the loving self-gift of Christ, who seals with his blood the irrevocable union between God and humanity.
The Fathers of the Church perceived with depth this passage from the Jewish symbol to the Christian sacrament. Saint Ambrose affirmed that the wine of the Supper is no longer merely the fruit of the vine, but the blood of the true Bridegroom, given in sacrifice for his Bride, the Church. Saint Augustine, commenting on the Song of Songs, interprets the comparison of love with wine as a prophecy of Christian charity, sweeter and more enduring than any earthly pleasure. For him, the wine of human love points to the eternal wine of divine charity. Saint Thomas Aquinas, taking up the tradition, will say that the wine at the Supper is a visible sign of spiritual union: by drinking from the same cup, the faithful are made one body, sealing the covenant not only amongst themselves, but with Christ himself.
Thus the dialectic of water and wine is completed: water, symbol of the Law, purifies and prepares; wine, symbol of love, consummates and seals the covenant. Judaism already intuited this sacramental dimension by associating wine with joy and fidelity; Christianity, illumined by the Paschal mystery, recognises in the Eucharistic chalice the supreme form of love, the eternal pact between God and humanity.
3. The Sign of Cana: From Law to Love
The episode of the wedding at Cana, narrated in the Gospel of John, is not merely Jesus’s first public miracle, but a sign charged with theological meaning. To grasp its depth, it must be read in the light of the symbolism of water and wine within the Jewish context. The six stone jars destined for ritual purifications contained only water, a symbol of the Torah, of the Mosaic Law—indispensable for Israel’s spiritual life, yet unable, by itself, to offer the fullness of divine love. By transforming it into wine, Jesus neither despises water nor rejects the Law. He brings it to its consummation. The New Covenant is not born of the negation of the Old, but of its transfiguration: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it” (Mt 5:17).
The stone jars, cold and destined for external rites, become, through Christ’s action, vessels of new wine—the symbol of nuptial joy and of definitive communion between God and his people. The gesture is highly symbolic: water, which purifies externally, gives place to wine, which is drunk and interiorised, becoming shared joy and a sign of union. Saint Augustine reads this passage as the movement from letter to charity: the letter of the Law, though true, remained cold and unable to give life; the wine of the Gospel, by contrast, inflames hearts with love. Saint Thomas Aquinas, for his part, sees in this sign the revelation of divine pedagogy: the Law prepared humanity for Christ, but was only the beginning; in the Incarnation the promise is fulfilled in fullness, for “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17).
This inaugural gesture at Cana also carries another dimension. The setting is no accident: it is a wedding feast—a recurring figure in Scripture to express the covenant between God and his people. The new wine lacking at the feast and supplied by Christ points to the messianic joy of the definitive nuptials between Christ and the Church. The bridegroom, in the narrative, remains silent, for the true Bridegroom is Christ himself, who manifests himself as the one who brings the abundant wine of the new covenant. Patristic reading will insist on this aspect: the transformation of water into wine is the veiled announcement of the Eucharist, where Christ will give not only wine but his own blood, sealing with irrevocable love the union with humanity.
Thus Cana is the point of passage from Law to Love, from preparation to fullness. Water, the image of the Torah, is necessary, for it prepares, purifies and sustains; but it is wine, the image of love and the new covenant, that consummates and gives meaning. At Cana, Christ does not destroy water but transforms it; he does not invalidate the Law but fulfils it; he does not extinguish the rites but elevates them to the level of definitive communion. This is the deepest meaning of the miracle: the joy that overflows, the feast that does not end, the nuptial union that inaugurates the Church’s history as the Bride of the Lamb.
Water (Torah/Law): necessary, but insufficient for fullness.
Wine (Love/Covenant): the sign of joy and definitive communion.
At Cana, Jesus does not reject water (the Law), but transforms it into wine, showing that the New Covenant is not the abolition of the old, but its bringing to fullness: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it” (Mt 5:17).
The stone jars, cold and empty of joy, now fill with abundant wine—symbol of a love that surpasses ritual and introduces nuptial communion between Christ and the Church.
4. The Patristic Interpretation
The patristic reading of the sign of Cana confirms the interpretation that sees in the miracle a transition from Law to Grace, from the Old to the New Covenant. For the Fathers of the Church, nothing in John’s Gospel is accidental: every detail bears deep symbolic meaning. Christ’s gesture, in turning water into wine, is not an isolated prodigy, but a revelation of the divine economy, in which the old is carried to its fullness in the new, and external ritual yields to interior communion.
Saint John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Gospel of John (Homily XXI), highlights this aspect of surpassing: “The Lord, in changing water into wine, showed that he came to bring something better than what had been before: grace in place of the Law, truth in place of the shadows.” For the great preacher of Antioch, water is not despised, but fulfilled in its preparatory function. Shadow gives way to reality; letter to Spirit. The new wine, abundant and excellent, symbolises the radical newness of the Gospel, which does not abolish but surpasses in perfection what the Law only prefigured.
Saint Augustine, in his Tractates on the Gospel of John (IX, 6), reinforces this with his typical language of contrast and synthesis: “Water represents the Jewish people and the Law; wine, the grace of the Gospel. Christ turned water into wine because he changed the former observance into the joy of the new covenant.” The Bishop of Hippo insists that the transformation does not mean rejection. The Law was necessary like water that washes, but its insufficiency cried out for something greater. Wine thus becomes the image of true joy, of charity flooding the heart. Augustine sees in this passage a divine pedagogy: God educates the people by the Law, but leads them to maturity by grace.
Saint Bede the Venerable, in his Homilies on the Gospels, presents the same line of interpretation with the clarity typical of monastic masters: “The water destined for the purification of the Jews is changed into wine because the Law that prepared for Christ is turned into the grace of love by his coming.” For Bede, the pedagogy of external purification made sense as a foreshadowing, but, before the Incarnation of the Word, it is transfigured into an experience of love. The change of water into wine is therefore the sacrament of the change of the times: the Old Covenant yields place to the New, which is no longer founded on prescriptions, but on the loving self-gift of Christ.
The Fathers of the Church, in unison, interpret Cana as a sacramental sign of the passage from the Old to the New Covenant. It is not a matter of rupture but of fullness: what was preparation is now consummation; what was figure becomes reality; what was rite becomes communion. Water is not denied, but transformed. The Law is not abolished, but elevated. And the new wine that overflows announces that the history of salvation has reached its culminating point with the coming of the Bridegroom, whose covenant with humanity is no longer grounded in external prescriptions but in love poured out in fullness.
Fathers of the Church who confirm this reading. Among them:
Saint John Chrysostom (Homilies on John, Homily XXI):
“The Lord, in changing water into wine, showed that he came to bring something better than what had been before: grace in place of the Law, truth in place of the shadows.”
Saint Augustine (Tractates on the Gospel of John, IX, 6):
“Water represents the Jewish people and the Law; wine, the grace of the Gospel. Christ turned water into wine because he changed the former observance into the joy of the new covenant.”
Saint Bede the Venerable (Homilies on the Gospels):
“The water destined for the purification of the Jews is changed into wine because the Law that prepared for Christ is turned into the grace of love by his coming.”
Bibliographic Sources
Biblical Sources
A BÍBLIA de Jerusalém. New revised and enlarged ed. São Paulo: Paulus, 2002.
Jewish Tradition
EPSTEIN, Isidore (ed.). The Babylonian Talmud. London: Soncino Press, 1935.
FREEDMAN, H.; SIMON, Maurice (eds.). Midrash Rabbah. London: Soncino Press, 1939.
Patristic Tradition
AUGUSTINE. Tractates on the Gospel of St John. In: Works of St Augustine, vol. XIII. Trans. Augustinians of the Assumption. São Paulo: Paulus, 1999.
AMBROSE. On the Sacraments. On the Mysteries. Trans. Irineu José Rabuske. São Paulo: Paulus, 2005. (Patristic Collection, vol. 13).
BEDE THE VENERABLE. Homilies on the Gospels. Trans. José Eduardo Borges de Pinho. Lisbon: Paulus, 2001.
CHRYSOSTOM, John. Homilies on the Gospel of St John. In: Complete Works of St John Chrysostom. Trans. Eusébio Macário de Faria. Braga: Tipografia de Domingos Gonçalves Gouveia, 1872.
THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiae. Trans. Alexandre Correia. São Paulo: Loyola, 2001.
Historical–Rabbinic Context
Acts of the Apostles. In: A BÍBLIA de Jerusalém. New revised and enlarged ed. São Paulo: Paulus, 2002.